


No One Hates Me Like I do

by BlackandBlueMagpie



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Gen, References to Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, allusions to self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-03
Updated: 2013-06-03
Packaged: 2017-12-13 21:29:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/829078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackandBlueMagpie/pseuds/BlackandBlueMagpie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pessimism, for Grantaire, was like a security blanket. <br/>It never seemed it could be harmful. But then he never really realised how addictive pessimism could be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No One Hates Me Like I do

Pessimism, for Grantaire, was like a security blanket.   
It had come over him, taken over him some might say, as a safety mechanism for himself after he’d seen, experienced too many things, been let down too many times.  
He came to lean that if you expected less you’d be pleasantly surprised more often.   
Of course, in the earlier days of his teens when pessimism meant being proven wrong, it never seemed it could be harmful. But then he never really realised how addictive pessimism could be.  
Pessimism, he finds, pulls you down. You come to expect less and less, and eventually get proved right over and over.  
And so the security blanket smothers, you feel like you’re drowning, pulled under by luke-warm water than once provided a comfort like a warm bath but now feels more like suicide. You can’t get to the surface, though you can see it, see it in the faces words, actions of others. You know the world is good, in places. That people love and are loved, that things can change. But the bad that’s shoved in your face in headlines weighs you down like lead.  
What once extended to your family, your teachers, that inner circle you have as a teenager, spreads; like tar, coating everything until it’s hard to see the gold shining through. And the worst part is that you know the gold is there, if only you’d reach out and scrape away the paintwork slapped haphazardly on by yourself.  
He can feel himself getting his hopes up, just a little. And he finds the light hurts when you’re near the surface, when you’ve been in the dark so long. But being pulled down, feeling limbs pulled, lungs burning from that little inhale as the little dark voice in his mind is proved right hurts more than sinking.  
He tries hard not to care after that, forced apathy, deadened ice blue eyes staring down the neck of a bottle.  
Because, like the pessimism that brought him here, alcohol is addictive in its numbness, the slow burn pushes away the creeping oil, dripping down into his lungs and taking hold. And because red is addictive in its feeling, cutting through the blanket for the briefest time, thick, running to his fingertips.  
Cynicism, satire, callous and cutting, pulling just a little deeper.  
Grantaire thinks Enjolras is naïve and yet he watches, listens. He argues to garner attention, makes remarks, not to pull Enjolras down but to watch his own words be ripped to shreds, to watch some of the dirt be polished away only for him to bury the gold again.   
Part of him wants to believe. But it is out voiced by the part that forces him to scoff, to make jokes, to bury everything under extroverted sarcasm. The part that doesn’t want to care because he knows it will get him hurt.   
Falling for Enjolras was off script, falling off a knife edge. It should never have happened. Because falling for someone meant caring, meant giving a shit about what they thought and he couldn’t do that again. So he fought more, dove deeper to actively avoid Enjolras’s red red red seeping through the dark green-blue like blood.   
He buried himself in learning, in his earlier university days before he’d had another fixation, a group of friends. He detested mathematics but enjoyed science, he preferred to devote his time to the arts and to sport. He learnt to dance on a whim one lazy summer when there had been free classes and nothing else for him but a bus stop. He’d played tennis as a child, but finding himself without court or racket now turned his sportsman ship to activities such as boxing and single stick, being easier to practise with limited resources and found he enjoyed them. His main dedication was painting, and sketching, some of the few luxuries permitted to himself were a box of charcoal, a set of oils, a canvas, water colour sketch books. He tried to pick up guitar, buying a ghastly ramshackle thing from a charity shop, perhaps because it drew him in reminded him or something, or perhaps simply because he was bored and it would provide. It’s dusty. Distractions to prevent his mind from straying too far, to keep it occupied when it tried to think on its own track.   
Many didn’t understand how he couldn’t believe in anything. It was hard to explain, to someone who turned their pessimism into change. Perhaps the nearest any of his friends got was Jehan, or maybe Feuilly but even they had not sunk as he had, and for that he was grateful. He didn’t want to be understood because that would mean pulling someone else down. So he drank, he laughed, he smoked and slept around. It was self-destructive, but he needed that to keep him numb.   
He was drowning, slowly, in an ocean of his own making, so familiar it was comforting but so painful he wished he knew how he’d gotten that far. No one could pull him out, he didn’t want them to. Because that would mean pity and pity meant being different, being a cause to work on.   
He was left adrift by his own plan for security, left without a life raft by the very thing that should, in theory, have saved him.   
It took great forcefulness on his part not to believe. It took even greater forcefulness to not care. It wore him down, made him bitter, but he laughed it off. Cynicism, pessimism, living only to view the good in others without believing it himself, for arguments that should be brought down. It’s unhealthy, its defensive, but it’s familiar and that’s what matters to him.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry Grantaire is just my... Vent for angsty stuff? I promise I'll do other character angst I just identify with him more


End file.
